Category Archives: Publications

We’re delighted to announce that the first volume of the Open Jerusalem series, Ordinary Jerusalem, 1840-1940: Opening New Archives, Revisiting a Global City, edited by Angelos Dalachanis and Vincent Lemire, is now published and available online through this link: https://brill.com/view/title/36309

Abdul-Hameed Al-Kayyali, Open Jerusalem core team member, and Hassan Hassan, Open Jerusalem research collaborator, are the authors of the article on the Hebrew press in Late Ottoman Jerusalem entitled “القدس نهاية الفترة العثمانية في عيون الصحافة العبرية: مقاربة نظرية ونقدية”.

The surrender of Jerusalem to the British, December 9, 1917. The Mayor of Jerusalem, with white flag, offers surrender to two British tommies (sergeants), Library of Congress

The new issue of the Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée is out. It includes the article by Falestin Naili, Open Jerusalem core team member, on “Chronique d’une mort annoncée ? La municipalité ottomane de Jérusalem dans la tourmente de la Première Guerre mondiale” (Chronicle of a Death Foretold? Jerusalem’s Ottoman municipality in the torment of the First World War).

Letter of Yohannes IV to Sultan Abdul- Hameed II dated to 1874 E.C. (1882 AD) [BOA, code Y.A.HUS.170.97].The Autumn 2017 Issue of Jerusalem Quarterly (JQ 71) is now out, in print and online. It includes the article by Stéphane Ancel and Vincent Lemire “Across the Archives: New Sources on the Ethiopian Christian Community in Jerusalem, 1840–1940“.

Perhaps the most contested patch of earth in the world, Jerusalem’s Old City experiences consistent violent unrest between Israeli and Palestinian residents, with seemingly no end in sight. Today, Jerusalem’s endless cycle of riots and arrests appears intractable—even unavoidable—and it looks unlikely that harmony will ever be achieved in the city. But with Jerusalem 1900, historian Vincent Lemire shows us that it wasn’t always that way, undoing the familiar notion of Jerusalem as a lost cause and revealing a unique moment in history when a more peaceful future seemed possible.

In this masterly history, Lemire uses newly opened archives to explore how Jerusalem’s elite residents of differing faiths cooperated through an intercommunity municipal council they created in the mid-1860s to administer the affairs of all inhabitants and improve their shared city. These residents embraced a spirit of modern urbanism and cultivated a civic identity that transcended religion and reflected the relatively secular and cosmopolitan way of life of Jerusalem at the time. These few years would turn out to be a tipping point in the city’s history—a pivotal moment when the horizon of possibility was still open, before the council broke up in 1934, under British rule, into separate Jewish and Arab factions. Uncovering this often overlooked diplomatic period, Lemire reveals that the struggle over Jerusalem was not historically inevitable—and therefore is not necessarily intractable. Jerusalem 1900 sheds light on how the Holy City once functioned peacefully and illustrates how it might one day do so again.

The new issue of Jerusalem Quarterly is now available online. It includes an article by Yasemin Avci, Vincent Lemire and Falestin Naili (Open Jerusalem) about “Publishing Jerusalem’s Ottoman Municipal Archives (1892–1917): A Turning Point for the City’s Historiography”.